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Scoop.it!
Anything and everything related to mid-century education! This means textbooks and other educational materials from the 1940's through the 1960's. Although stuff from the 20's, 30's and 70's are okay, too. Via Catherine Smyth, Maree Whiteley 
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Scoop.it!
The EconomistTextbooks round the worldThe EconomistThe “New History Textbook”, for example, written by a group of conservative scholars, is the result of a backlash in Japan against the “masochistic” way history was taught in the decades after the...
Nice article on perspective in textbook writing. I just recently had my students read my students count up the pages in their American history book to get a sense of who is represented by racial category, surprise surprise the white male category won by an overwhelming majority. I think it's also important to note the tone in which things are written, historical figures always have great accomplishments, but never humanizing failures. As one of my students pointed out, it leaves us with an idea that America is always progressing that it never has a bad day. Via Luke Walker
Peter Yang's comment,
October 14, 2012 11:42 AM
Peter Yang 10B Textbooks are written to give us the truth of history, but after reading this article it showed me that we are really reading from a person on a desk and erasing the bad parts in the past and showing us the good and how peaceful their countries are. There is a quote in this article it said who controls the present controls the past. I agree with this quote because the educational department of every country is hiding facts of what they did bad and changing history from what is happening. We can relate this to our class homework on the page counting because in our textbook you can flip through it and find out it is talking how Americans? White men are not evil and saying how fabulous they are and talk about other skin colors as nothing important and they usually just touch on their topic lightly and you can see as well in the article that government are teaching children by textbooks which are telling what the government want us to hear about the good things each country gives. So I made an equation, true history + government = governmental viewed texts. So When reading a text book we need to be alert that some times the texts in the textbook are not telling the whole view and look for many views on one subject Will show us the truth behind history.
Wali Guerrero's comment,
October 14, 2012 12:56 PM
Not long ago, the Wadiyan Dictator that went by the name Aladeen significantly impacted his great nation. He outrageously decided to strike out some basic, fundamental words and phrases such as “Yes” or “No”, “Positive” or “Negative” and replaced them all with the word “Aladeen” in honor of himself. This scandalous amendment was forcefully included into the academic curriculum of young Wadiyans. Thus, causing mass confusion and chaos. Similarly, modern textbook writers, media hotshots, etc., compose biased and twisted versions of history, information, and messages they publish. Just like how the Dictator of Wadiya exploited the fear of the Wadiyan citizens through his extreme rule to commit such outrageous acts, these textbook writers exploit the fact that the majority of the less fortunate are not able to get their hands of any reading material besides the textbook by brainwashing them with propaganda, glorifying themselves, or simply writing anything for the highest bidder. Recalling the recent page counting activity, it is evident that our American History textbook is mostly written from the perspective and in the interest of white men. Also, from the genuine, “straight-through-the-heart”, primary sources (provided in by Mr. Walker) that are no where to be found in the textbook (by that I mean the ones talking about the unappealing side of American History), we can deduce that the textbook writers possess hidden incentives. Or that they simply “forgot” or “missed” such important sources ;).
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What was school like in the 1950s? I love these visual images that seem vaguely familiar!